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Mumbai gets a slice of heaven as La Chérie’s ‘Dancing Cloud’ lands
MUMBAI: Desserts don’t usually make the city stop and stare, but this one jiggles its way into the spotlight. La Chérie, Pune’s cult-favourite cheesecake label, has floated into Mumbai with its now-iconic “Dancing Cloud” Japanese cheesecake, a dessert so airy it’s redefining indulgence.
Unlike the dense, sugar-heavy cheesecakes most Mumbaikars know, La Chérie’s version is souffle-light, made in small daily batches, and entirely preservative-free. The texture is the star delicate, cloud-soft, and melt-in-the-mouth with no gelatin, agar, compound chocolate, or artificial stabilisers sneaking in. A quiet rebellion against hyper-processed sweets, it focuses on freshness, technique, and purity.
The range caters to every mood: a Mini Dancing Cloud at Rs 299, a Chocolate variant at Rs 359 for solo indulgence, or the Big Dancing Cloud Whole Cheesecake at Rs 899 for celebrations. Available via Swiggy and Zomato, the cakes are crafted to be enjoyed warm or chilled, depending on preference.
The timing couldn’t be more perfect. With Japanese flavours gaining ground in Mumbai from matcha menus to omakase dining La Chérie taps straight into the city’s evolving palate. What started as a quiet cult in Pune is now shaping Mumbai’s premium dessert scene, proving that sometimes the lightest creations leave the heaviest mark.
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Samsung certifies 1,000 Maharashtra students in AI and coding
The South Korean electronics giant marks its first large-scale skilling push in the state, with women making up nearly half the national programme’s enrolment
PUNE: Samsung has put 1,000 students in Maharashtra through a certified training programme in artificial intelligence and coding, the largest such drive the South Korean electronics company has run in the state and a signal that corporate India’s skilling ambitions are moving well beyond the boardroom brochure.
The certifications were awarded under Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC), the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility programme, which launched in India in 2022 with the stated aim of democratising access to future-technology education. The 1,000 graduates were drawn from four institutions: 127 from Savitribai Phule Pune University, 373 from Pimpri Chinchwad University, 250 from D.Y. Patil University’s Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology and 250 from Anjuman-I-Islam’s Kalsekar Technical Campus. All completed training in either AI or coding and programming, the two disciplines Samsung has identified as the critical pillars of the digital economy.
The programme does not stop at technical training. Soft-skills development and career-readiness modules are baked into the curriculum, a deliberate attempt to close the gap between what universities teach and what employers actually want.
“India’s digital growth story will ultimately be shaped by the quality of its talent pipeline,” said Shubham Mukherjee, head of CSR and corporate communications at Samsung Southwest Asia. “As technologies like AI move from the periphery to the core of industries, skilling must evolve from basic training to building real-world capability. This milestone in Maharashtra reflects how industry and academia can come together to create a future-ready workforce that is both globally competitive and locally relevant.”
The Maharashtra drive sits within a rapidly scaling national effort. Samsung Innovation Campus trained 20,000 young people across India in 2025, hitting its stated target for the year. Women account for 48 per cent of national enrolments, a figure the company cites as evidence of its push for an inclusive technology ecosystem. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India and the Telecom Sector Skill Council.
Samsung, which is marking 30 years in India this year, runs SIC alongside two other initiatives, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow and Samsung DOST, as part of a broader effort to build what it calls a generation of innovators with both the technical depth and the problem-solving mindset to thrive in a fast-moving digital world.
A thousand certified students is a tidy headline. Whether they find jobs that match their new skills is the harder question, and the one that will ultimately determine whether corporate skilling programmes like this one are genuine pipelines or well-photographed gestures.
